I hesitate. “And, I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m beginning to feel like maybe I’m losing a part of who I am?” I remember my mother saying that once—that, isolated in the tiny, mossy-green house in the tundra in the dead of winter, thousands of miles from everything and everyone she knew, she began to wonder, to fear, who she would become in five, ten, twenty years if she stayed.
What choices she would begin to regret.
Is this what she meant?
Jonah studies my features. “Calla, I don’t know how to fix that for you. If I could, I would. But you need to stop doin’ things because you think I want you to, or because Muriel tells you to. I don’t give a shit if you know how to cook. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate not living off frozen dinners, but it’s not why I fell in love with you. If you burn everything from now until the day I die, I’ll still love you.”
Warmth fills my chest, hearing those words. “What if I burn down this house?” I ask tentatively, my lips curling into a smile for the first time today.
He gives me a flat look but it softens immediately, as his gentle hand tucks a strand of wet hair behind my ear. “Where’s the woman who rolled into Wild, knowing nothin’ about charter plane companies or Alaska, and convinced me, the stubborn ass, that Wild was doing it all wrong?”
“It was just a website.” My dad sold the company before we could ever hope to turn the lagging parts of the business around.
“Where’s the woman who got so pissed off at me one night, she shaved my face while I was unconscious?”
I tip my head back and laugh—the sound coming from deep within—and the simple act releases waves of tension that have gripped me since yesterday.
He sighs. “Calla, you’re not like anyone else I know around here, and I’m glad. I don’t want you to be like Marie. You’ve got somethin’ of your own to add to the mix. You don’t have to become someone else. Do what you wanna do. Seriously, if you want to put up motion-activated witches and goblins around our property to scare off bears, do it. If you don’t ever want to learn how to fire a gun, fine. If you want to let Zeke in to mow down everything in that garden, go ahead.”
“I’ve actually liked going out there and picking strawberries.” Even if I don’t eat them. I shrug. “It feels like I’ve accomplished something.”
“Then keep doin’ it! But do it because you want to. Find a way to make Alaska work for you, and soon, you won’t even think about the few little things that don’t.”
“The few little things?” I echo. “Man-eating bears, earthquakes, raging forest fires, giant mosquitos, worrying that you’ll crash every time you leave—”
“All right, all right …” He smirks, but then it fades. “I can’t be the only thing keeping you here. You’re too driven to be sitting at home, waiting for me. You need to find something that’ll make you want to be all in with this.” He presses a gentle kiss against my damp skin.
“Sounds like something Agnes said to me once.” I wish I had the answer.
“That’s probably ’cause she said it to me last night,” he admits.
“That’s who you were talking to on the phone?”
He nods. “I needed to know exactly how much of a jackass I was. She’s always been good at tellin’ me.”
“Agnes would never tell you that.”
“Trust me, she’s got her own special way.” He smiles. “Anyway, she helped me see my part in all this.”
“I’m sorry for mine.” I cup his jaw between my palms. “And I’m sorry about Marie. She didn’t deserve that. I’ll apologize the next time I see her.” My idea of her dating Toby might be good, but my intentions weren’t. If the roles were reversed, I’d probably hate me.
His hand slips beneath the hem of my towel to settle on my hip. “Agnes thinks I have a huge blind spot with Marie. I’m startin’ to think she might be right.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did I ever tell you that she was engaged when I started flying her around to the villages?”
“No.” Jonah has never said much about his friendship with Marie.
“Yeah. We hit it off right away. And I’m not gonna lie, I thought she was hot, and super smart, and nice—”
“Okay, I get it.” I wonder if I want to hear this.
“If she’d been single, I probably would have made a move. But she was gettin’ married, so she was off-limits, right from the start. Anyway, she was only supposed to come out once every two or three months, but she started makin’ trips once a month, sometimes more. We’d spend days together. We got to be really good friends. And then about a year in, she told me she’d broken off her engagement. She said they’d grown apart, that she didn’t love him anymore. I flew into Anchorage to see how she was doin’. We met up at a bar to have a few drinks, shoot the shit. When we were saying good night, she kissed me.”
I knew this. At least, I knew about the kiss—not the how, when, or why. “And?”
“And …” He hesitates, as if he doesn’t want to admit the next part. “For about ten seconds, I was gonna go with it. But then I stopped because it didn’t feel right. I hadn’t looked at her like that in a long time, and she was too important to me as a friend to screw it up. Plus, I knew she wasn’t the kind of girl who was into hookups, that she’d be lookin’ for somethin’ serious, and I wasn’t lookin’ for that, with anyone. I told her all this, too. She apologized, said she was just drunk and not thinking straight, and that us being friends was too important for her, too. So, we agreed to not talk about it again and left it at that.”
“And you believed her?” I can’t hide the doubt from my voice. I know the first thing Diana would say if she were hearing this story—Marie didn’t love her fiancé anymore because she’d fallen madly in love with a certain bullheaded bush pilot. They were close friends. He was attracted to her. That he denied her that night didn’t mean it couldn’t happen in the future, once he was ready to settle. I sigh. “Guys can be so dumb.”
“What was I supposed to do?” He shrugs. “We went back to things being normal and they seemed fine. She didn’t date anyone for a long time. Said she wanted a break after being tied down for five years. She mentioned this guy with a bunch of ferrets who asked her out, and she told him she wasn’t interested.
“And then I met that pilot with the coast guard that I told you about.”
I nod, and in the back of my mind is that little voice that automatically tosses out curious questions like it does every time there’s mention of a woman from Jonah’s past: What does she look like? Does she think about him? Does he think about her? If she had been in the picture last summer, would I be here now?
“A few weeks after Teegan came into the picture, Marie started dating the ferret guy. I figured she’d changed her mind, he grew on her, whatever. I didn’t think anything of it. She seemed happy. I even met the guy once, and he was decent enough.
“Then Teegan and I ended things, and Marie was single again a week later. Said it wasn’t working for her. Again, I didn’t think anythin’ of it. And she never mentioned dating anyone again. I’d ask sometimes, because I was curious, and she’d say she was too busy with work. Last year, she finally admitted that she’d met a guy, but she was waitin’ for him to figure his shit out.” He frowns. “I’m starting to think she was talkin’ about me.”